Barnes and Noble
by draconisVulpini
Summary: Book store/Coffee Shop AU - in which Steve meets Bucky again, ten years after he disappeared and was presumed dead.


"Natasha."

"Yes, James?"

"Why the fuck do I work at Starbucks?"

Clint, who was on kitchen duty today, laughed loudly. Bucky retaliated by shooting him with the Nerf gun he kept in his apron.

"Well," Natasha began, "I would assume it's because Starbucks was the only place that would take a grad student majoring in history and Russian."

"Hey fuck you. You're majoring in Russian, too!"

She gave him a leveled look. "Alongside computer engineering."

Clint cackled again, and both Bucky and Natasha shot him.

* * *

Sam was welcomed home to a loud crash and louder cursing.

"Whoever told me you were a sweet little angel needs to room with you for a day," he said, throwing his coat onto the hallway wall hooks, "just to see how goddamned wrong they are about you, Rogers."

Steve's reply was too muffled for Sam to hear until he was standing in Steve's doorway.

"-might've accidentally spilled paint all over my history book."

Sighing, Sam silently patted himself on the back for insisting Steve put a tarp down in his art corner. His roommate was unbelievably clumsy and his sudden asthma attacks didn't help.

"You want help cleaning up?"

Steve shook his head. "No, I didn't get much paint anywhere except the pages of _World War Two: the History of Propaganda_. I'll let it sit, turn it into something later. But I'll need a new copy…"

Sam sighed again. "I'll drive you. But you owe me coffee, man."

"Barnes and Noble has a Starbucks next door."

* * *

Bucky hurried to shove his Nerf gun back in his apron when he heard the doorbell ring.

"Look, Steve, I get that you couldn't let that shithead keep harassing that girl!"

"Then quit raggin' on me about it!"

"I'm just sayin' that you should'a come got me! Which of us has gone through boot camp and could actually kick a dude's ass?"

"Yeah, well, I'm working on it."

Bucky was a little surprised to see a skinny white boy walk in with Sam. Usually Sam came alone.

Natasha made it to the counter before he did. "Your usual, Sam?"

Sam beamed. "Yep! And Stevie here's paying."

Stevie scowled, and Bucky froze. He knew he knew this kid. He _knows_ him. But from where…?

"Hold that thought, Sam, my coworker is fritzing out."

Bucky ignored her, and dug into his mind as deeply as he could-

"James, you need to stop."

-He could feel it, the memory is in his grasp-

"James! Jame- Bucky!"

-that's it.

He staggered and braced himself on the counter. Sam and Stevie- Steve- both stared at him. Sam in concern, Steve in shock.

"….Bucky?"

Natasha glared at Steve, but Bucky patted her arm. "It's okay. He's from before."

Her expression softened.

Steve reached over the counter. "Bucky, what-? You disappeared ten years ago! How are you-? Are you okay? Who do I gotta kill?"

Bucky laughed, and turned to Natasha. "I'm calling in sick."

She nodded. "You looked like you were about to vomit so I sent you home."

While Bucky was gathering his things, Natasha made Sam's coffee and Sam rounded on Steve.

* * *

"Man, what the hell was that?"

Steve shrugged. "I'm not sure. All I know is that that guy was my best friend since I was four, and he vanished when I was thirteen. I thought he was dead."

Bucky swung open the 'employees only' door and said, "Well, punk, I'm not dead. And it's a long story."

Steve grinned, and Sam was surprised. He hadn't ever seen Steve this happy in all the time he's known him.

"All I care about if you not being dead, jerk," Steve admitted.

They left the coffee shop and Bucky began his story.

He had been in a car crash with his parents. A drunk driver had hit them and their car had gone off a cliff. Both of his parents had died upon impact, but Bucky survived. He never found out how, because he only woke up three months later in a private hospital, which is where he met Natasha.

The hospital was owned by a man named Alexander Pierce. Since Bucky's parents had died and nobody knew if Bucky had other family he had used his contacts in the government to get custody of him. Since Pierce lived in an apartment above the hospital, he had Bucky live in the hospital itself, because after he woke up he was in no shape to be moving around and he was very wary of Pierce.

It was Natasha who broke them out, a year and a half later, when a Man named Clint Barton came in to have his hearing checked again. She smuggled Bucky (who was just beginning to walk again) into the back of Clint's car and hid herself in the trunk.

"So what'd this Barton guy have to say when he found out?"

Bucky snorted. "Well, he wasn't pleased. He was actually pretty pissed until we finally admitted that Pierce had paid professional brainwashers to try to turn us into assassins."

Sam's jaw dropped.

"Yeah, I'm serious. Thankfully, all they managed to do was scramble our memories. Which is why I freaked out in the coffee shop," Bucky said, shrugging. "It happens from time to time."

From then on, Bucky and Steve were nearly attached to the hip outside of work and classes. Even during work and classes, they texted nearly nonstop.

Still, it was nearly a month after they had been reintroduced before Bucky revealed another secret.

* * *

"So, um, I have to go to the mechanic today," Bucky told Steve.

Steve frowned. "But you don't have a car…"

Bucky shrugged uncomfortably. "It's for something else. I want you to come with me."

"Of course I will."

Natasha narrowed her eyes when she arrived to pick Bucky up and Steve hopped in the back of her car as well, but she said nothing until she stopped outside Stark Tower.

"_Don't let him eat Steve alive, James_," she warned, switching to Russian.

Bucky scoffed. "_I'm more worried about Steve tearing him a new one."_

Steve ignored their banter. "Bucky, why are outside of Stark Tower?"

"This is where my mechanic works."

Bucky led him to the elevator. A hand scanner was installed in place of a call elevator button. He scanned his hand.

"Welcome, Mister Barnes. I see you have an unregistered visitor. Would you kindly introduce him?"

"Jarvis, this is Steve Rogers. He's mine and I vouch for him."

"Please wait while I inform Mister Stark."

Steve mouthed, 'yours?' and then 'Stark!?'

Bucky shook his head.

Jarvis let them up, and Steve got the shock of his life when Tony Stark, genius playboy millionaire, dragged Bucky to a padded chair and started peeling clothes off of him.

"What the fuck-"

"Steve, it's okay. You remember how I went off a cliff, right?"

He nodded slowly.

"Well, I didn't make it out of the crash in one piece."

And then Tony Stark peeled Bucky's skin off, and instead of muscle showing, it was metal.

* * *

After that ordeal, Steve chewed Bucky out for scaring the shit out of him, and Bucky promised that he'd told Steve everything he remembered.

Natasha, Sam, and Clint had a betting pool going on when they'd hook up. Natasha gave them less than a month. Sam bet two to six months, and Clint thought they'd need someone to point it out before anything would happen.

At the seventh month mark, Clint announced Steve's arrival at the coffee shop, "Barnes, your Boyfriend is here!"

Clint won the bet, Steve and Bucky started dating, and Sam traded his bedroom for Bucky's so that now Sam and Natasha shared an apartment.

"Ten bucks they start dating in a week," Clint said when he heard about it.

Bucky snorted. "Nah, I give 'em at least two weeks."

"Natasha already asked him out," Steve replied, distractedly, while he was sketching out his latest project. "He said yes, so they're going to see the Young Justice movie tomorrow."

"Well, fuck."


End file.
